Let me start with the conclusion. It was a fantastic evening that I would not have wanted to miss but almost missed.
I am so glad that TivoliVredendurg sends reminder emails of the tickets you bought. Mike Zito came on stage right on time.
The audience had literally crawled onto the stage in the meantime. In Cloud Nine the stage is a bit low and especially if you are small this causes some problems.
Zito has a small band with him on this tour consisting of bassist Doug Byrkit and drummer Matt Johnson. After some messing around with cables a relaxed Zito started with “Mississippi night” Immediately up and running and with many solos. After the JJ Cale cover “I’ll Make Love to You Anytime” followed “Blues for the Southside”, a completely instrumental song that he wrote about the neighborhood where he grew up in St. Louis, Missouri.
A long guitar solo of 6 minutes follows, what a feeling he can put into the song. Unfortunately, there is no Hammond tonight, who would have been an asset to this song. The evening is very varied because “Hell on Me” is a shuffle again.
Mike Zito’s latest album “Life is Hard” is about love and loss and is dedicated to his late wife Laura.
The title track “Life is Hard” and especially “Forever My Love” are beautiful. I read somewhere that the solo in “Forever my love” is perhaps even more beautiful than that of “Still got the blues” and maybe this person is right. “Darkness” is clearly a more emotional song, Zito also manages to express this in his solo.
With his guitar he hits exactly the chord that fits the song. The songs from this album are among the highlights of the evening.
Towards the end there was a long version of “Back Problems”. According to fans from the audience this is his jam song. He plays the song differently every time. A wonderful version followed.
The evening ends with the solid “Judgement Day” in which he incorporated the solos of Led Zeppelin ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and Kashmir. He does this more often because we had already heard “Hideway” by Freddie King “All along the watchtower” earlier in the evening. During the encore Mike sang “Pearl river” without a microphone. The audience did not suffer from the Dutch disease and was completely silent. As already mentioned, a fantastic evening.
The support act consisted of Mojo Hand & Luca. Before 1 month ago I had never seen Frank Reemers and his band. Now by coincidence 3 times: Frank solo at Blues@thefactory, Mojo Hand at the Dutch blues awards and now with Luca (Holkenborg) as the support act for Mike Zito.
For me, the latter is the preference. A second guitarist gives so much more to a blues band. Especially when both are allowed to play solos and they don’t get in each other’s way. The closing was a real party.
Wonderful guitar duels between Frank and Luca. What a talent Luca Holkenborg remains, he didn’t win the Dutch blues award for the best young talent this year for nothing.
